Shepherd Stories

Bianca had to have emergency surgery a few weeks ago. We had no idea anything was wrong with her until she suddenly started acting funny that afternoon. It all happened so quickly, the night before she had gone for a long 2-3 mile walk to the park and she was acting normal that morning as well.
The first thing I noticed was that afternoon, she was limping slightly, but when I called her to see if I could tell why, she stopped limping and was walking normally again. I felt her leg and could not find out why so I let it go. Then a while later she started limping again, and when I called her to me that time she was not wanting to get up, even when I had food, and when I checked her gums they were pale so I knew something was seriously wrong. So I rushed her to the vet. It turned out she was bleeding internally and had an enlarged spleen. She had to be transferred to the emergency clinic because it was too late in the evening for my regular vet to perform the surgery. She had emergency surgery to remove her spleen that night. When they did the surgery they found several masses that had ruptured on her spleen, that's what caused the bleeding. She also needed a blood transfusion during surgery.

We had brought her to this specific emergency clinic partly because this was the clinic where Bianca had been a blood donor herself for two years (retired recently because the age limit is 8 years), they have a volunteer blood donor program where people sign up their pets to be donors. Luckily for us they happened to have blood donor dogs who were there the day we had came in with our emergency and they were able to immediately use the blood from one of the donors for Bianca.
I highly recommend the canine blood donor programs, if your dog is the right size to be a donor(usually over 50 pounds) and friendly, many areas have these volunteer programs. Sometimes they have the volunteer programs for cats as well, one of my cats has also been a blood donor (they have to be 10 pounds or over and have the right temperament for it.)

Bianca went through surgery with no complications. Sadly this was not the end of things, as they had also found some small masses on her liver and took samples of those as well as of the ones from the spleen and a sample of the spleen lymph node to send for biopsy. The biopsy results came back positive for cancer (HSA).
We consulted with an oncologist who recommended a metronomic chemotherapy protocol.
Bianca is doing well right now, healing very well from her surgery so hopefully she will do well with the chemotherapy treatment also.

Our Shepherd, Wade, just had to have his spleen and a huge tumor removed & too has been diagnosed with cancer. We're having some additional x-rays done on this coming Tuesday to check his lung & heart for tumors. Because he only had 3 legs when we initially took him in we all thought he had arthritis in his hips, they gave him Rymadyl and he responded immediately to it. About 6 weeks later he began to show symptoms again and that's when they found the initial tumor. His prognosis isn't good but we're okay for the time being and he's feeling better and is having a ball right now.